ECG baseline wander and powerline interference reduction using nonlinear filter bank

Methods of noise reduction have decisive influence on performance of all electrocardiographic (ECG) signal processing systems. This work deals with problems of baseline wander and powerline interference reduction. It is impossible to reduce effectively these disturbances without signal distortion using a linear filtering approach. Another disadvantage of the linear filters is their long impulse response. This leads to inadmissibly large delay in ECG signal analysis in monitoring and exercise electrocardiography. This work presents a new class of nonlinear filters without these disadvantages. Additionally, using a bank of these filters, powerline interference reduction is possible. Performance of the new method is experimentally compared with the traditional methods of baseline wander reduction using synthetic as well as the signals from the CTS-ECG database. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.